Azumanga on the Road
by einootspork
Summary: Chiyo-chan and Osaka embark on a wacky cross-country journey with all their Azu-friends to reach Tokyo and become famous! But as each adventure becomes crazier than the next, will their goals change? AU, no pairings.
1. I

_I'm not doing that not-future one with the weird name anymore so I thought I'd do something else to replace it, and I came up with this drug trip of an idea. Basically, it's Azumanga Daioh reworked like a road movie. I should warn you it's completely non-canon, and even though it has all the same characters, pretty much everything else is different. It's set in a strange sort of alternate universe that's really all kinds of different things thrown together._

_also i don't own azumanga daioh but yu nu dat_

--

**AZUMANGA ON THE ROAD**

**I**

On the dot we call the Earth, in the wonderful country of Freedomland (population 1.3 billion, official languages Japanese, English, Klingon and Birdspeak, capital Stockholm, main exports wheat, electronics, gold, silver, and toothpaste), in the small west-coast town of Osaka, in the shabby but still fairly respectable Osaka Bus Station, at 7:12 AM, there was a young girl sitting on a bench playing the banjo.

It was a gift given to her by her mother before she had died. It didn't look pretty; it had been worn out by time, blasted with wind, covered in acid rain, carried through heat and cold, and this one time bit by a rattlesnake. But it was the most precious possession this girl had. It was the only possession she had now, besides the clothes on her back and the ties in her hair. It reminded her of better days before the depression - before her parents had lost their jobs when the toothpaste company they owned had collapsed, before her twin sister had left, before The Patrol, before the food shortages, before any of the chaos or the bad things entered her life. Back when things were simple. Now all she had left was this banjo. When life got her down, she would forget her troubles by playing it.

This hadn't fixed any problems, but she was getting very good at playing the banjo.

She sighed and put the banjo down. She looked up at the overcast sky until her neck started to hurt, so she looked down at the yellowed grass. She picked some and held it in her hand. It wasn't quite dead yet. Neither was she. She wasn't sure what sort of hope she was supposed to derive from that, given that the grass would die in five months when winter rolled around, but somehow it made her smile a little. She couldn't give up hope. Otherwise she couldn't be thankful for what she did have. Or what she didn't have - some kind of life-threatening disease, for one.

"Why'd you stop playin' there? I was enjoyin' the music."

The girl looked up from her clump of grass and found a girl probably not much older than she was standing next to the bench she was sitting on. "Oh... I don't know, really..." she said warily. "Are you..." She looked warily at the girl- she appeared friendly enough, and she didn't seem to have weapons on her, but you never know... and there was a strange look about her- but maybe it was just the fact that she just looked so happy. Not a lot of people were happy in these times.

That made it even more odd when the girl smiled blankly and said, "Well, I just thought it was a nice song, is all. You really can play good." She held out her hand- "I'm Kasuga Ayumu. Some people call me... well... Kasuga Ayumu. What's your name? D'ya have one? I've met some people who say they don't have one. They're pretty scary-lookin', though, not like you. Y'know-"

"Er." The girl looked at this Ayumu girl apprehensively. She knew she shouldn't talk to this strange person or she could get into some trouble, but she also knew that a friend, even if they were only one for a day, could really help out in these times. Plus, her parents had raised her to always introduce herself to someone who had introduced themselves to her. "I'm Mihama Chiyo. It's a pleasure to meet you," she enunciated. She actually sat up just so she could bow to her new acquaintance before sitting down again.

Ayumu stared at her intently. "Huh... you sure talk fancy. You sure are somethin', I dunno anyone else who'd talk like that when they got no money. You could go pretty far on charm I'm bettin'. Not to mention that you're talented. And, uh, I hope it don't seem weird for me to say so, but you're pretty cute too."

"But I'm not those things," Chiyo sighed. "I'm really nothing special, believe me. I'm not like Nikola Tesla, whose revolutionary contributions changed the field of electromagnetism forever, or 1729, which is the smallest number representable in two ways as a sum of two cubes, or mint chocolate chip ice cream, which is yummy."

"Wow, you're even smart too. I bet with all that plus a little luck you really could go far," Ayumu smiled. "I bet you could make it real big. Like, real real big. Bigger than that world's largest ball of twine I saw once."

Chiyo gasped. "You mean..."

"I sure do! The magic store! The dream factory! Tokyo!"

Tokyo was the greatest city in all Freedomland. Sure, Stockholm was the capital, but it just didn't compare. After all, Stockholm wasn't where all the world's biggest stars were made.

"You really think so?" Chiyo beamed.

"'Course I do! Why would I lie?" Ayumu said, giving her a slightly stern look, as if telling her that thinking she was a liar had consequences.

"Well, gee, thanks, but... I dunno..." Chiyo said. "I don't know how I'd go about doing something like that..."

"Oh, easy," said Ayumu. "You can just take a look at the bus schedule and-"

"But, miss," Chiyo interrupted glumly, "I don't have any money..."

"Oh... Well, then, I dunno what you'd do then... Unless you had like a flyin' carpet... You got a flyin' carpet?"

"Uh, no..."

"OK, OK, just askin'." Ayumu put her hand on her chin for a few seconds before snapping her fingers. "Then why don't you just hitchhike?"

"What?"

"You know, hitchhike. Stick out your thumb at passing cars and see who picks you up." Ayumu explained, vaguely waving her own thumb to sort of illustrate the point. "It's kinda like bein' a parasite, except instead of sucking blood or eating the food your host digests-"

Chiyo quickly waved her hands and spoke to stop her new friend from going into the gory details. "No, no, I know what hitchhiking is, I just didn't believe you had said it..."

"Oh, OK. Sometimes people can't understand all the stuff that I'm sayin', yanno?"

"Maybe, I dunno... I mean, I know I've been through a lot, but I don't think I would feel very safe doing that unless I had someone else with me..." She looked up at Ayumu.

"Well, I dunno what to... Oh no, you're not thinkin' about me going with you, are you?" Ayumu gave Chiyo that strange look again, as though examining her.

"Er, uh, n-no, I wasn't," Chiyo lied.

"Really? Cuz I would totally take you if you wanted me to," Ayumu continued, brightening up immediately.

"No, it's fine, it's- Wait, did you say you'd take me?"

"Yeah!"

"Oh, wow, thank you! That would mean a lot to me!" Chiyo beamed for a few seconds, then abruptly looked serious and added, "Wait, can you drive a car?"

"Why would I need to drive a car?"

"...What? But I thought you said-"

"That we would hitchhike together."

"Right, so wouldn't we-" Then it hit Chiyo. "You mean you want both of us to go and signal for a car?"

"Yeah, see, that's what I was tryin' to tell ya," said Ayumu as if it was very obvious.

"I thought you meant you'd drive me," Chiyo explained apologetically.

"Naw, naw, it's fine! Besides," she said, cupping her hand over one side of her mouth and leaning in closer to Chiyo conspiratorially, "I don't really have any money either, so I couldn't, like, pay for food or lodgings..."

_Food or lodgings? _Chiyo repeated to herself in her head. _What would that matter? She can't even drive!_

Out loud, though, she merely said, "Okay, let's get going then!"

So they did.

--

"Y'got any fives?"

Chiyo looked up from her hand at Ayumu.

"I don't know," she said, "I can't see my hand, it's too dark out here." She kicked up some dust and, squinting, watched it float to the other side of the road.

"Really? Cuz I think the moon's real bright tonight."

"I don't think that's enough," said Chiyo.

"Well, I don't have a flashlight, so yer gonna have to just guess."

"No, I think I'm finished." Chiyo put her cards down onto the dirt. She looked up at the moon. "You know, the moon _is_ awfully bright tonight. Why do you think that is?"

"Prob'ly cuz they painted it white, so more light bounces off it."

"...I don't think that's it."

--

_Wow, I totally didn't expect to go so overboard at the beginning. I guess I don't know myself as well as I think._


	2. II

**II**

Back in the day, the Roman Empire had an extremely extensive and interconnected road system, hence the expression "All roads lead to Rome." In fact, at its height, there were twenty-nine major roads covering a total of seventy-eight thousand kilometers all across the empire.

Freedomland wasn't as well-paved. Well, in reality, it was – actually, it was much _better_-paved than Rome, what with the modern invention of tar – but often it seemed as though it wasn't. Despite the immediately prior mention of tar, there were a seemingly incalculable number of shabby dirt roads where you'd have thought some sort of highway ought to have been.

And this fact, in conjunction with the fact that the driver of this particular vehicle was shooting through the road as though her car had a pair of jet engines strapped to the roof, meant that there was so much dust being kicked up into the air that it was almost like she was driving through a heavy fog.

This understandably gave her passenger some cause to be nervous.

"Yukari, I really don't think you should be driving this fast!" said Kurosawa Minamo.

"What, are you kidding me? We'd never get there in time if we slowed down!" As Yukari said this, she gesticulated with her free hand toward the windshield, as if there was something worth seeing out there instead of the biggest man-made dust devil ever unleashed upon the unfortunate citizens of Earth.

"Get there in time?" repeated Minamo. "We're not even really going anywhere!"

"Well, gee, if you're gonna focus on the _details_ like that..." Yukari scoffed. She waved her free hand in dismissal.

"And another thing, Yukari," said Minamo, aghast. "For God's sake _at least drive with both hands!_ Are you trying to get us 'trolled? Or more likely, killed?"

"'Trolled" was a slang phrase that had recently entered into the Freedan lexicon, short for "Patrolled." This was referring to the recently established Patrol, although "The Patrol" in itself was a slang phrase. Officially, they were known as the **F**reedom**L**and **U**nification and **F**ortification **F**orce, or the F.L.U.F.F. for short. To avoid the obvious, no government official ever wrote it down without the periods, but this didn't stop some particularly rebellious citizens from referring to the members spitefully as "fluffies."

This nickname was also partly a reference to how harmless they really were, despite appearances. They could mean bad news sometimes, but more often than not their almost shrinking-violet attitudes only served to annoy. If anyone was scared of them, it was more for what they represented – that is, an increasingly paranoid government. If it weren't for said government's inefficiency, F.L.U.F.F. might actually have been a threat.

"Oh c'mon," Yukari countered, "What's the point in living life if you don't take a little risk? Life is too short for you to make it so dull, Nyamo-chan."

Minamo goggled at Yukari, half-expecting her to start cackling with insane laughter at any second. Certainly Yukari had displayed a tenuous grasp on her sanity in the past, but this time Minamo was sure that this time her – she forced herself to say it – her _friend _had completely lost it, flipped her lid, checked out – in short, gone stark raving bonkers.

Minamo tried to say something, but no sound came out.

She was quiet for a long time, then suddenly barked, "Stop driving."

Yukari looked over at her blankly. "What?"

"Stop the car, get out, and then I'll drive," said Minamo, in perhaps one of the most forceful voices she had ever used in her lifetime.

"Well, jeez, Nyamo, why?"

"What do you mean, why? There's no _why._ Just do as I say."

"But-"

"Did you hear me?"

A pause, then:

"Fine." Yukari sighed and took her foot off the gas pedal.

Nothing happened. Or at least that's how it seemed.

Minamo was so stunned by the sheer implications of the fact that they didn't appear to be slowing down at all due to inertia that she immediately lost her forceful demeanor again. In fact, she once again goggled.

"But... it shouldn't... that's not how... physics... it..."

She kept goggling.

Eventually, she noticed that the dust was gone and that she could now see an equally worthless blur, but she kept goggling.

Eventually, she noticed features of the land becoming visible, but she kept goggling.

And then the car was, at last, at a full stop.

And she kept goggling.

At least until suddenly she heard two indistinct voices coming from somewhere and turned her head weakly toward the tinted side window.

She rolled it down and was greeted by two young ladies camped out on the side of the road.

"Well, hi there!" said a rather plain-looking hitchhiker with a funny-looking straw hat and a slight accent that Minamo could not quite place.

"Oh, thank you so much for stopping for us, miss!" said the shorter, cuter one with a rather silly (Minamo thought) pair of pigtails wobbling on her red head and a banjo strapped around her back. "I'm sure we won't trouble you at all. I hope we have a nice time together!" With that, she bowed.

Minamo thought she was being a bit overpolite for a hitchhiker, but not wanting to appear rude, and having finally regained her composure at least somewhat, started to respond. "Well, I-"

"Haha," Yukari interrupted, laughing, "It's no trouble at all! Just hop in the back and we'll take you wherever you need to go! I'll just start the-"

_"NO."_

"OK, fine, jeez, _you_ drive, all right, all right, I get it."

Yukari grudgingly exited her vehicle and let Minamo take her place. Then she sat down into the front passenger's seat and made a hand motion indicating that the two hitchhikers should follow.

The older girl plopped down on the left-hand side of the back seat contentedly. She had never been in such a fancy car before. Why, it even had seat belts! She struggled for a second with the seat-belt before Minamo took pity on her and helped her with it.

"Sorry for the intrusion," the younger girl recited as she scooted into the car, contrasting sharply with her companion by quickly and deftly snapping the two parts of the seat-belt together.

Minamo gave the cute hitchhiker a wary glance. _I don't think that's quite appropriate for this situation... But I guess she's at least trying to be polite._

"So..." she said awkwardly, "You would be..."

"Mihama Chiyo at your service," the redheaded girl chirped.

"And ah'm Kasuga Ayumu. It's nice to meet y'all." The older girl was staring out the back window upside-down.

"Charmed. We're Yukari–" Yukari pointed at herself– "And Nyamo."

"Don't call me that!" Minamo protested. "I'd much prefer you called me Kurosawa-san," she confided to the kids, turning back at them. "If that's all right with you, of course."

Neither of them answered her, so she sighed and put the key in the ignition.

She turned it.

Nothing happened.

She turned it again.

Still nothing happened.

"You have to jiggle the key around a little bit to start it," Yukari pointed out as she intruded just far enough into Minamo's personal bubble to irritate the shit out of her.

She jiggled the key around some.

This time, nothing happened.

"Oh, and you gotta rev up on the pedal too," Yukari amended.

She jiggled the key and revved up on the pedal, and yup, you guessed it, nothing happened.

"Oh, HERE, let ME do it," Yukari grumbled. She forced her way through Minamo's barrier and fiddled around for a few seconds before the car immediately started up. Minamo seethed quietly.

"All right," she said, trying to control her anger, "Let's go."

And with that, they rode off into the sunrise.

––

_Ha! So you thought I had given up on this! Well, you were wrong. Dead wrong! Ha!_

_Originally this chapter was gonna be longer, but I think I have a problem with making chapters too long, so I intentionally made it short. Maybe it's a little too short, but I think it does end at a good spot, so that's all right I suppose. Besides, this whole story is just an excuse for me to be strange, so it doesn't matter that much._

_Oh, and I swear I'll have the fourth chapter to my other Azumanga fanfic up soon! I'll try to set my goal for the end of the school year._


End file.
